


The Devil, Falling

by DoreyG



Category: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Genre: First Meetings, Late Night Conversations, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29352852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: “Hello?” Clerval said.
Relationships: Henry Clerval/Frankenstein's Creature
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	The Devil, Falling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reeby10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeby10/gifts).



“Hello?” Clerval said.

He had been stalking the man all night, and most of the day before at a slightly further distance. When he had stopped in a small pub, to chat with the locals and be effortlessly charming in a way that left him thoroughly disgusted, he had slipped into a nearby alleyway and watched from there. He had been getting steadily closer as the hours passed by, drawing out the anticipation of the murder that was about to happen.

Never, not in all of his plans, had he expected Clerval to greet him with good cheer. He found himself frozen for a long moment, staring at the man as he stood innocently under a gas street light and stared blithely into the dark. “Uh, hello.”

“I wouldn’t normally accost a stranger…” Clerval made a face, as if he was well aware this wasn’t exactly the truth, but nobly forged on. “But I can’t help but notice that you’ve been standing there a while, ever since I went into this fine drinking house. Are you alright, my good sir?”

There were a lot of ways he could answer that question, from the brazenly threatening ‘yes, but you won’t be’ to the far more philosophical ‘no, but that is the case for all the damned souls that wander this cursed earth and will be so until judgement day’. In the end, he settled for a somewhat weak sounding, “not really.”

“Do you need help? Perhaps a warm place of safety to rest your weary head?” Clerval gave him, or rather the darkness he was wreathed in, a bright smile. He could see what his accursed creator saw in the man, so cheerful and open was he. “Or perhaps just a friendly ear to tell all your troubles to?”

“I have so many troubles that I wouldn’t know where to begin,” he said bitterly, a curdled taste in his mouth as he recalled all that had led him to this point; standing in a fetid alleyway, preparing himself to sin against God - as if any god cared for him in the slightest - yet again in the name of petty vengeance against a man who would never change. “On the day of my birth my own creator, the one who should’ve looked to protect me the fiercest, cast me out; and ever since that hour I have been seeped in misery. I wander the earth like a ghoul, and every single soul turns from me with lamentations of horror. I provide assistance, and they scorn it. I attempt to seek companionship, and they flee me. I try to bury myself away from humanity, subject no other to my presence, and yet even that is torn from me with wicked brutality. I sometimes think that I am eternally cursed to be the most miserable of men.”

“It sounds like you’ve been through a lot, a lot more than any man should reasonably have to go through,” Clerval said, his tone full of genuine sympathy. He found himself confused at the sound of it, turning it over in his mind for some sign of treachery. No man had ever attempted to pity him before, it seemed beyond belief. “It also sounds as if you’ve been rather unfortunate in your choice of friends.”

“None of them have been my friends!” He snarled, because it was true. Even the sweet dwellers in his cottage had hated him in the end, had taken one look at the reality of him and turned on their heels in terror. “I don’t think that I’ve ever had a friend. From the day I was born I have been entirely alone, friendless, and I dare say that state of being will continue until the day I take my very last breath.”

Clerval made a soft noise, the expression on his face genuinely distressed even at just the mad ravings of a stranger. “A hard way to live a life.”

“And yet, the only way open to me,” he said heavily, suddenly overcome with a swell of despair. It was hard to live constantly on the run, hard to wallow always in darkness while knowing that a man less deserving - a man who treated all, not just those he had created, ill - was allowed to walk naturally in the light. “Sometimes I feel as if I deserve it, to be eternally cast out with no affection or succor. I was born an innocent, but I did not remain one for long. I have sinned, over and over again in the most brutal of ways. Perhaps my current mode of living, sour as it tastes, is but my penance.”

“I don’t believe that,” Clerval said, and for the first time a rather endearing note of steel entered his tone. “Even the most hardened sinner is worthy of redemption, even the very worst of men deserves a chance to prove himself better. If not, there is no point in any of us toiling so fruitlessly on this green earth.”

Nobody had ever said such a thing to him before, nobody had ever spoken to him for more than a handful of moments and deemed him worthy of redemption. He found his breath coming faster, the prickle of harsh tears in his eyes. “You don’t know me.”

“Not yet,” Clerval said, and there was such simple certainty in his tone that it took his breath away. “Come into the light, and let me see you properly. I don’t claim that my lodgings are much, but I have a spare bed and a warm fire. And beyond both of those things, I am willing to extend as much help as I possibly can. You are not alone, no matter who you may be or what you may have done.”

So this was the tipping point, the moment where such unexpected kindness came to an end. He hesitated for a long moment, and then drew in a deep and unsteady breath and stepped resigned into the light.

Clerval’s eyes bulged for a moment, and as predicted his throat worked in a silent expression of profound terror. But then… Against all odds, he mastered himself. Allowed his eyes to return to their normal width, and actually greeted him with the kind of warm smile that one friend would extend to another. “It is nice to properly see you at last, as opposed to having a conversation with a shadow.

“You cannot mean that,” he said, and gestured to himself; he was still shocked, stunned beyond understanding at the fact that Clerval was not screaming or attempting to flee him. “Look at me. I must be the most monstrous being you have ever seen.”

Clerval was of the same breeding as his maker, far too refined for anything so pedestrian as a shrug, but he did lower himself to a casually dismissive gesture. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

“And most beholders have surged into a murderous rage the moment they laid eyes upon me,” he said flatly, a queer pain in his chest. He really should, now that he had been seen, get on with the business of murder and vengeance… But somehow, with Clerval looking at him in such a compassionate way, all of the rage that’d fuelled him for so very long faded away. “I hope your rooms aren’t in a particularly public place.”

“No worries, they’re in a very private corner of town,” Clerval hurried to reassure him, and then gave a slow and golden smirk that drew his eye for reasons he couldn’t quite divine. “Besides, if you think that you’re particularly horrific on the eye try seeing fifty drunken Scotsmen coming out of the pub in the middle of the night.”

It wasn’t a particularly fine joke, but it did break the tension. He snorted a laugh, one faintly strange sounding to even him, and gestured for the noble Clerval to lead on. They walked through the darkened streets of the town together, suddenly transformed into two men out for a stroll instead of a brutal murderer and his terribly innocent victim.

“I’m Henry Clerval, by the way,” Clerval said eventually, quite casually, and sent him a look of inquiry like he was genuinely curious as to what his answer would be. “Do you have a name?”

“I…” He had never, to tell truth, given much thought as to what name he would bear; a strange fact, as a Christian name seemed to define most men and women who bore it. He hesitated for a moment, dwelling on all the myriad options from the brutal ‘creature’ to the florid ‘Prometheus’, and in the end settled for one that had always seemed accurate and that he had always secretly rather liked. “You can call me Adam.”

“Adam,” Clerval repeated, and smiled up at him in that still golden way, “It’s very nice to meet you, Adam.”


End file.
